All This Time
by Midnyght Saber
Summary: Hundreds of years have passed since the birth of Danny Phantom, and he remains alone, the only one of his family never to cross that final threshold. Returning home, he finds just how much has changed.


**Disclaimer:**_ Danny Phantom_ and all related characters and information are the property of Butch Hartman and Viacom International, Inc. "Re-Align" is the property of Godsmack and Republic Records, a subsidiary of The Universal Motown/Universal Republic Group.

* * *

"Pardon me, sir, but you can't be in here right now. Touring hours aren't until nine o'clock tomorrow morning!" the woman called, having started closing up for the night. The figure, plain fedora shadowing his face, responded only by leaning against the wall nearest the doorway that led into the basement, making no motion that he would be leaving, let alone if he'd heard her.

Clipping her keys onto her pants, the woman walked briskly across the house that had once served as the residence of the Fenton family about two hundred years earlier, now recognized as a national landmark and preserved as a museum for ghost hunters and those interested in Danny Phantom's legacy. Tapping the man gently on the shoulder, she tried to get his attention. "Sir, you can't be in…" she began, stopping only when the rim of the fedora lifted enough to reveal glowing green eyes, eyes that all who worked in the Fenton Museum recognized. "Daniel, what are you doing here?"

"Reminiscing. Trying not to cry. Wondering why it is that I'm the only one left." He sighed softly, falling back against the wall. "Sometimes, even I'm not sure anymore."

"Well, I have to lock up the building within the next few minutes. Will you be alright if I lock you in?"

"As long as I'm still the half-ghost you remember me as, that shouldn't be a problem, Meredith."

"Take it easy, Daniel. And if need be, there are tissues in the upstairs bathroom." She rested her hand against his shoulder, squeezing it gently. "Is there anything else?"

"How long has it been like this?" Danny asked, running his hands along the immaculate walls, no longer dotted and marked with the various explosions that often resulted from his dad's experiments being moved to the kitchen. "How long have I been away from home that where I lived is a museum? How long has it been since the velvet ropes were hung and our doors left permanently open?"

"The house has been a national landmark for going on about 150 years now, and we've been doing daily tours for about 40 or so, give or take a few years. About the only thing we were allowed to work on is painting over some of the older work in here to spruce it up."

"It still feels like home, you know," Danny said as he took a step towards the basement stairs. "Is the lab…?"

"It's still just like it was when you were growing up, Daniel. The only safety precaution down there is the fact that most of the weaponry and other tech doesn't have a charge to it anymore, either because we removed the power cables or pulled the power packs. If you want, though, you can flip the switch down there, at the bottom of the steps on the right-hand side, and it'll activate our little display. I do apologize that no one notified you of the hologram images we're using down there, but I hope that they're matched up to what it was like for you growing up."

"You know," Danny spoke softly as he began his descent, "I'm going to take a look, and if something doesn't mesh right, I'll talk to whoever opens tomorrow morning and get in touch with the director, see if we can't get it fixed."

With a half-hearted and rather weary smile, Meredith turned around and headed for the front door, locking up behind her as she left the lone Fenton child with his memories.

As the front door locked with an all-too-familiar click, Danny slowly let himself hover down the stairs, reaching to his left to turn on the lights in the lab. Flicking the switch, the overheads thrummed alive, and Danny noticed, with some disdain, that although they were using energy-efficient bulbs, the lighting was far too bright for this section of the house.

"A hundred and fifty years, huh?" Danny asked to the empty air. "I've been out working towards saving this world and the Ghost Zone for so long, and in all that time, I never once managed to come home." He scoffed at the lab, so strangely quiet. "All this time, and all I've ever done in Amity Park is visit their graves?"

Leaning back, he pressed the switch that Meredith had told him about, and slowly, the system they had installed kicked to life.

**Decisions made in desperation**

**No way to go**

The initial holograms that played, realistic despite their truthfully insubstantial, ghost-like quality, were of his parents working away on the Fenton Thermoses, of which three were proudly displayed on a nearby work table, carefully protected from time and children's fingers by half-inch thick glass, a small card providing the name of the item and its purpose.

The holograms continued, about fifteen minutes dedicated to the holo-wraiths of his parents working on some of their smaller gear, giving way to them beginning the final stages of work on the Fenton Portal. Moving through their images, Danny ran his hand along some of the control panels, finding that the covers that moved aside as his parents worked were as unreal as the images he'd just passed through.

**Internal instincts craving isolation**

**For me to grow**

Pained blue eyes looked up as the images switched over, now displaying two people that Danny had relied on so much, people he missed just as dearly as his family, and he realized, with a pang, that there had been no presence, this early in his history, of his older sister, and the chances of there being holograms of her little to none unless the museum's display spanned all of the years he had lived within this house.

Reaching out, he shunted aside his reality for a moment, running his fingers gently along the airy image of his wife at fourteen, almost able to feel the warmth of her skin against his flesh. Stepping away, he watched the scene play out, the computers somehow miraculously able to perfectly replicate their voices, and he could feel the first tears crawl to his eyes as Sam spoke.

**My fears come alive**

**In this place where I once died**

"_Smile!"_

"_Okay, I showed you the Portal. Can we get out of here now? My parents could be back here any minute. Besides, they say it doesn't work anyway."_

"_C'mon, Danny, a Ghost Zone? Aren't you curious? You gotta check it out."_

"_You know what? You're right. Who knows what kind of awesome, super-cool things exist on the other side of that Portal?"_

Danny watched mutely as he donned his infamous jumpsuit for the first time, still bearing its mostly-white coloration, and saw that whoever had been assigned to work on the development of this little bit of Phantom history had really done their research, as his father's face was intricately detailed on the chest area of his suit. He was, however, surprised to see that someone had gotten their information a little crossed, or at least decided to take a little creative license.

"_Wait a minute,"_ the digital version of Sam intoned worriedly.

Knowing full well this was a digital re-enactment of the original accident, not the one that occurred after the Desiree incident that had gotten rid of his powers, he was shocked to see Sam pull out her own decal, and smiled as she pressed it to the front of his suit. His hand wandered unconsciously to his own chest, where, though he was in human form, he knew the decal rested, an eternal reminder of how much Sam had been a part of his existence as Danny Phantom.

**Demons dreaming, knowing I**

**I just needed to re-align**

Danny mutely watched this amalgam accident, portions of each of the two Portal accidents, and heard his screams echo throughout the room as the holographic display showed his body horridly twisting within the Portal as the electricity, tinted green, coursed through him. Closing his eyes, he didn't even have to see his digital replica stumble out of the Portal and fall to his knees. He'd lived that moment twice, and knew well what happened. Turning, he walked out of the basement, smacking both switches and letting the lab fall back into its uncharacteristic darkness.

Climbing the stairs slowly, Danny worked his way through the silent house, phazing through the rope hanging between the main hall on the second floor and into his room. Dropping down softly on his bed, he was surprised at how soft the blanket felt, realizing that the museum team that kept the Fenton homestead in presentable shape actually still took the time out to do laundry, keeping the room fairly well kept. He noticed, with a slight bit of shame, that there were a few random shirts and pieces of paper thrown around the room, characteristic of his life, as hectic as ghost hunting had made it. He was, however, glad that they had kept all of his model spaceships and other NASA-themed memorabilia in his room, his eyes wandering over the stars that decorated his ceiling, stars he could read like any book.

Little plastic glow-in-the-dark stars his mother had spent three weeks helping him hang, and as the thought crossed his mind, he felt the tears rise again.

**Fell in a river of illusion**

**And apathy**

Not a single day had gone by since any of them had passed on that they weren't on his mind at least once. Taken by the steady progression of time, each had left the world of the living, and each left an incurable scar across his heart, the pain of loss worsened with the steady progression of time…and his general lack of ability to age.

In time, he had taken to only making a few rare visits back to the city of his birth, spending more time going from location to location around the world, either fighting against whatever ghost decided to make its presence known, or working to soothe whatever tense relations there were between the human and ghostly inhabitants of an area. The more he worked himself to exhaustion each night, the more vivid the dreams were, and though he woke with the pain that those he cared for most were gone, he lived each day as they would have wanted, with him being the hero he was.

Every now and again, he was found on the internet, searching the information superhighway for names and addresses, quite often loosing track of his very-much distant family. The powers that be had felt it necessary to keep him and Sam from ever having children, but Tucker and Jazz didn't suffer the same fate. Jazz and her husband had made Danny an uncle three times over, and Tucker's family consisted of two adorable kids that Danny was happy to be godfather to. As the years continued to roll by, and the families became more expansive and moved further away, it didn't surprise Danny at all that he'd lost touch. As often as he himself was on the move, it was all but expected.

**Drowning in a self-induced confusion**

**I'd rather be**

Sighing and opting to rather annoy the museum staff than fall asleep in a borrowed room or on a couch somewhere, Danny phazed off his shoes, curling up under the covers of his bed, barely realizing that it, though feeling the same as it had so long ago, no longer smelled like home.

The dreams didn't come that night, and with the rising of the sun the next morning, a soft hand woke Danny from the haze of unconsciousness, and Danny blushed furiously as he shot up, succeeding not in getting out of the bed so much as falling out within a massive tangle of bedding. Phazing clear of the fabric curled around him, Danny was quick to both apologize and get ready to leave.

**My fears come alive**

**In this place where I once died**

**Demons dreaming, knowing I**

**I just needed to re-align**

The person that had woken him rested a hand on his shoulder, trying to get the boy to calm down. After all, it wasn't every day that the Fenton Museum had Danny Phantom on site, and the director was interested to know if the half-breed child would mind staying for the day. In the end, Danny agreed, not so much interested in what his presence would do to the popularity of the museum, but because he felt that his presence would mean something to those he spoke with that day.

He didn't bother showing them the scars that lined his body, nor did he tell them of the pain that came with his battles, or the gnawing sorrow as he remained young, his family, friends, and all he knew aging, weakening, dying. What he told were the stories of his escapades across the world, from the early Amity Park days of his true youth, to some of the most recent missions he'd been on. In the lab beneath the house, he showed them the many varied pieces of Fenton ghost-hunting equipment, his own ectoplasm charging the long-dead mechanisms so that each could, in turn, be shown, should their usage be safe enough in his eyes.

In every set of eyes that followed him that day, he saw the same thing – he saw their pride in his work, their comfort in knowing that he was there to protect them, their silent thanks for all that he had sacrificed to become who and what he was. A centuries-old veteran of a unique kind of war, he was everything they had learned to trust and believe in, and Danny couldn't help but feel comforted by the fact that they did, indeed, look to him as something more than just another famous star.

**My fears come alive**

**In this place where I once died**

**Demons dreaming, knowing I**

**I just needed to re-align**

He was their guardian.

He was their keeper.

Much like the statues that decorated the world over, with him holding the planet aloft in one hand, they saw Danny as their support, their safety, their promise for a bright new morning each night that they went to sleep.

Thanking the director profusely for his chance to work in the museum for the day, Danny was out the door as soon as the house was locked up, the still-bright sky illuminating his path to a place he knew all too well.

Passing through the iron gate of the cemetery, Danny made his way quickly to the first of three locations he wanted to visit. Kneeling at the base of one small monument, his fingers traced slowly over the names inscribed upon it, the names of his family, so many years gone from his life. Beneath the statue lie the three marble headstones, the birth and death dates glaring up at Danny though the slight bit of overgrowth. Fashioning his ectoplasm into a small blade, he worked slowly to clean up the area were his mother, father and older sister were buried, leaving their headstones as clean as they had been they day each was set.

**My fears come alive**

**In this place where I once died**

**Demons dreaming, knowing I**

**I just needed to re-align**

His second stop was at the graves of Tucker and his wife, and he repeated his actions, clearing the few fallen branches and leaves away, knowing from the couple of planters nearby that he'd missed the current generation of Foleys by no less than a week.

His last stop was always the hardest one for him, as Sam had been the last of her family line, her love for him and his twisted genetics cursing them both to childless years. Never once during the marriage did she blame him, and her love for the world more than made up for the fact that she had no family to raise and nurture. To her, the people that Danny protected were her children, though in nothing close to the traditional sense, and that love for the people, her affection towards those her husband fought to keep safe, made her as much a part of what people saw in Danny as Danny himself.

Raising his eyes from the inscription in the onyx marble as he cleared away the last of the debris, his eyes coursed over the marker to her grave, a beautiful work that Danny could no longer remember who had done it. Held between two panes of unbreakable glass, the stained glass image reflected softly in the evening light, its image renewing Danny's tears. Upon the glass were two forms, very detailed images of him and Sam, curled into each others' arms at the base of a blossoming tree, and behind them was not only the faint, ephemeral image of the earth, but also Danny Phantom, arms encircling the pair, signifying his eternal love for the woman he had vowed himself to, and also the fact that, though Sam had been special to him, all were protected by his watchful emerald eyes.

Curling up just above where her headstone lay, in front of the timeless image of his one true moment of happiness above all else in his long life, Danny laid his head down into the soft grass, silently listening to the oncoming night.

**My fears come alive**

**In this place where I once died**

**Demons dreaming, knowing I**

**I just needed to re-align**

* * *

Yeah, I realize that it doesn't fit with the lyrics. It wasn't really meant to. Sometimes, when I write, I don't do it because of the words, I do it because of the images that play in my head, and with this song, I always saw Danny, alone in the world way beyond the end of the show, returning home for the first time in years, and though it all feels so familiar, deep inside, he knew that he no longer had a home to go to, and that where he truly wanted to be, despite all that the world needed of him and thanked him for, was with his family. The idea of never being able to have kids just seemed part of that pain that he has been forced to endure, though it was not part of the original storyline.


End file.
